The manifestation of magnetic order in quantum systems is of fundamental importance in physics. Bose-Einstein condensates of spinor atomic gases have the potential to be a powerful system in which to explore quantum magnetism over a range of parameters impossible to access in the solid-state. However, several important condensed matter models are not robust to perturbation by external magnetic fields, and to date no experiments have been reported for spinor BECs in a regime where the linear-Zeeman energy is negligible compared to spin-interaction energies. This SGER project will will develop and test the performance of an apparatus to study spinor BECs in optical lattices and in ultra-low magnetic fields, and allow the PI to develop methods to actively control and minimize the magnetic field by using in situ microwave atomic spectroscopy. Experimentally the goal is to reduce magnetic fields to below 1 micro-Gauss.
The broader impact of this research would be in the education of graduate students. This project would also have links to condensed matter physics through its study of strongly correlated many-body quantum systems and it could impact magnetometry and quantum information science.
